Given the explosive response the trailer for The A-Team has gotten, I think director Joe Carnahan will become quite the hot commodity after this summer. And according to Cinematical, we now know what he’d like to do after his first big blockbuster — a survival drama entitled The Grey. The project comes from his own script, which is about a group of Alaskan pipeline workers whose plane crash lands on their way back home from a remote work site. The workers then find themselves hunted by a pack of wolves. Carnahan describes it as “very much a man vs. nature adventure, existentialist kind of drama that I want to do.”

While Grey sounds perfect for him, Carnahan has had a history of failing to get projects off the ground. There’s Killing Pablo, the Pablo Escobar biopic that was to star Javier Bardem and Christian Bale, but ended up falling apart after Bardem bailed. And of course, there’s the oft-mentioned White Jazz , his L.A. Confidential sequel. He mentions that if Grey fails to get off the ground, he’ll likely come back to these projects.

Even after all these years, Carnahan still seems excited about the prospect of making White Jazz:

I think there’s a lot to be pessimistic about in the business right now because movies like that aren’t getting green lit. I think if we can do it for a number, and that number is gonna be…about $12 [million], then we can make that movie. I think it’s a tremendous script, and I think there’s always a place for that kind of movie. Certainly there’s still got to be a place for the L.A. Confidential sequel, I can’t imagine that we’ve forgotten that completely.

While his Smokin’ Aces was a financial success — it cost around $17 million, but made $58 million worldwide — the film’s uneven tone and lack of consistent action made it far from a critical darling. If Carnahan makes a killing with A-Team, a film which has the potential to make hundreds of millions at the box office, then he may soon find his production troubles magically resolved.